


Collaborators

by do_it_to_julia



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Angst, Espionage, Estrangement, Hand Jobs, Implied/Referenced Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Kylo Ren is Matt the Radar Technician, M/M, Mild Smut, Minor Character Death, Sort Of, Unhealthy Relationships, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-27
Updated: 2019-06-27
Packaged: 2020-05-12 07:19:56
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 3,652
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19224349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/do_it_to_julia/pseuds/do_it_to_julia
Summary: Written for the 2019 Dopheld Mitaka Fanworks exchange.On the way home to visit his family, Mitaka meets a blonde radar technician who is strangely familiar.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

  * For [verybadhedgehog](https://archiveofourown.org/users/verybadhedgehog/gifts).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that political views expressed in this fic are not those of the author. Love me some unreliable narrators!

The shuttle to Hays Minor had been stopped in orbit for twenty minutes. Mitaka craned his head back to stare at the closed cockpit doors, wondering if it was worth checking in with the pilot.

Rationally, he knew that their paired TIE escorts, whose wide, flat wings were only just visible through the passenger bay windows, were little more than a formality granted by his rank; the Otomok system always had its fair share of insurgents, but the harsh, icy climate of Hays Minor tended to bottle them up inside the environment-controlled cities, easily detected and contained. Still, it was hard not to worry. Especially given the circumstances. Dopheld looked down at his datapad and tapped in a brief message to his brother-in-law.

_Shuttle delayed, might be a tad later than expected. How are the girls? -D_

He caught the eye of the only other passenger in the compartment as he waited for the planetary network to confirm sending. As before, the tall, blonde technician was staring sullenly at the opposite window, thick brows furrowed above equally thick glasses. Mitaka had been grasping for his name ever since the two had left the _Finalizer_. It was Mitt, or Mack, or something, and the lieutenant had a vague memory of him being a bit of a gym rat, apparently obsessed with Kylo Ren's training regime to the point where it was regular mess hall conversation for him.

As a man who tended to keep to the treadmills, Dopheld had always been intimidated by the type of person who spent all their time around the free weights. He was ninety percent sure Mick (or Natt? Maybe it was Natt) was at least a little bit gay, because no straight guy would spend that much time talking about the Supreme Leader's abs, but any thoughts of approaching him were quashed by the possibility that Mott would take one look at him and reject him instantly. Phel wasn't  _unfit_ , by any means, but he wasn't exactly shredded, either.

Besides, Matt (Matt! _That_ was it!) was enlisted crew, not an officer. There wasn't a rule against it, but sleeping with non-officers always felt kind of weird the two or three four times he'd done it. Or five times? Maybe it was five. Mitaka frowned and started counting off on his fingers. He heard Matt give a small snort of laughter, and glanced at him.

The expression on his face wasn't unkind, but Dopheld had the strangest feeling that Matt was laughing at something he'd done. That couldn't be right, though. The technician wasn't even looking at him, just staring absently at the doors to the cockpit, head turned to the side. Mitaka found his eyes lingering on the line of Matt's jaw, the curve of his full lips.

There was a mechanical swish as the co-pilot finally came in.

"What's the delay?" Matt asked abruptly, and there was an unusually deep, commanding tone to his voice that made the lieutenant blink a couple of times and adjust his legs. Clearly this was a different side of Matt to the one he'd glimpsed across the tables in the mess hall. (A hot side, added Mitaka's libido, unhelpfully. Dopheld told it to shut up.)

"Blizzard on the ground," the pilot replied brusquely. "Too much horizontal wind shear to make a safe descent. Gonna be at least an hour, I'm afraid."

"Take a- could you take an alternate route? I need to get to Namunngarvik urgently," the technician replied. The woman gave a small snort.

"Above my pay grade, mate. Look, I'm gonna catch up on some holovids. I'll let you know when the skies have cleared."

Matt glared at her as she withdrew again. He took out his datapad and started typing furiously. Mitaka glanced down at his own, where there was a new message waiting.

_Don't worry, we've seen the storm outside. Mersey & baby are resting and well. Can't wait for you to meet your niece! -N_

He typed a quick, grateful reply, and then sat back. An hour to wait, at least, which wasn't ideal, but it gave him time to catch up on some work.

Or, said a treacherous voice in his head, you could talk to Matt. Cute Matt. Hot Matt. Matt who seemed to be looking at Dopheld now like he knew exactly what the Lieutenant was thinking. Mitaka felt his cheeks go warm.

"It's - Matt, right?" he asked, trying to dispel some of the awkwardness. "What's in Namunngarvik? Are you visiting someone?"

The other man tilted his head. His deep brown gaze flicked away.

"Visiting family," he murmured. Mitaka's eyebrows rose. He'd grown up in one of the neighboring villages; tiny, squat settlements where the traditionally-built houses barely kept out the cold. It was a good few hours' trek from Sebris city, unless you could find someone willing to take you there by speeder, and some villages weren't exactly known for their hospitality toward the Order.

"You didn't strike me as a local," Dopheld replied. "My family's from Derevnya. Do you know it?"

Matt made a noncommittal sound. "I was very young when I left," he murmured.

"Me too! Well - I was fourteen," the lieutenant blustered. "Signed up for the Order. My father wasn't happy, but it meant I could get my sister into school in Sebris city. She's two years younger than me. Just had a baby, actually." He was blabbering, and he knew it. _Kriff, Phel, are you really trying to hook up with someone? Now? He probably doesn't even like you._

Another one of those small, enigmatic smiles. Matt's eyes moved back to him. "Sounds like you made the right decision," he replied quietly. Then, after a pause; "Congratulations."

"Thank you." He grinned and sat back. "You know, I - don't think we've ever really talked."

Matt seemed to be considering something. His gaze roamed down over Mitaka's body. "I don't recall," he replied. "Maybe we haven't."

There was something oddly appealing about that cool, detached tone; something clearly apart from the impression of Matt that Phel had put together in his head before this. In all those second-hand glimpses of his personality he'd gleaned from his friends on board, nobody had ever mentioned his personal magnetism. To be fair, though, it could have just been that Dopheld found him attractive. (His inability to resist a handsome face was also fodder for the _Finalizer_ 's gossip mill, not that he was particularly ashamed of it.)

"How do they take it?" he asked Matt abruptly. "Your family, I mean. I hear they're still not too fond of the new administration, outside of the cities."

"Oh, I know," murmured the technician. His lips twitched, as if smiling at a private joke, but he offered nothing further, and Mitaka wondered if he was being invasive. He cleared his throat to try and cover for his error.

"My father doesn't even talk to me any more. Called me a filthy traitor when I saw him at Mersey's wedding. Of course he'd been drinking - I doubt he ever _stops_ drinking these days... it wouldn't be so bad if he was actually _doing_ something about it, you know? Not that I particularly want my father to be part of a Resistance cell, but all he ever did was sit in bars and bitch about the Order with his friends, then come home drunk and bitch to us." He remembered surreptitiously taking the Officer Training Aptitude Test on his personal console while his father ranted about despotism and military control from the kitchen table, firelight flickering against the straw-bale inside walls of their home because the heat generation system had broken, again, and they didn't have the credits to fix it. The memory made his brow furrow.

"Yeah." Matt's deep voice broke through his reverie. "I know all about crappy fathers."

"You too, huh?" Dopheld offered him a smile. "Maybe it's something in the water. Or all that bloody snow."

Gradually, they fell into a less awkward tempo of conversation, and Matt even seemed to warm up to him a little. He referred to his past in only the vaguest sense - a disappointing father, a distracted mother, an uncle who betrayed him in some horrific and unspecified way - but it was enough to convey a fairly sympathetic picture. Mitaka was giving serious consideration to asking Matt out for a drink when they both returned to the ship. The "family emergency" he'd alluded to was apparently going to take him to "some pretty remote places", and he seemed either unwilling or unable to state how long he'd be staying, so meeting up in the city obviously wasn't going to work. It was probably just as well. The prospect of running into a former friend or distant relative, most of whom now thought of him as a collaborator, wasn't exactly desirable.

The shuttlecraft had a small fresher in the stern, just beyond the cargo hold. Dopheld excused himself after a little while, took a little extra time to splash his face and rinse his mouth out. Just in case. He met Matt on the way out again, coming awkwardly face-to-face with him in the slim corridor; in their brief moment of proximity he caught the technician's gaze roaming downward again, caught the warm intensity of those big brown eyes on his. He smiled and murmured an apology, but hesitated a moment before moving.

Afterwards, he would be unable to recall who kissed who first, but it didn't particularly matter. Suddenly Matt's hands were on his waist, strong body pressed up against his own, and _kriff_ , it really _had_ been too long since the last time, because Mitaka was giving serious consideration to breaking his "don't fuck a stranger in a shuttlecraft fresher ever again" rule (and given the incident which had prompted it, that was _really_ saying something). He must have hesitated too long, though; as abruptly as the kiss had started, it broke off, and the technician seemed to press himself back against the bulkhead behind him, hands pressed to Dopheld's chest, as if trying to keep him at arm's length.

"I'm sorry," the taller man murmured. "I can't - it wouldn't be right."

"Oh." Phel swallowed his humiliation. "I - is there someone else?"

"Sort of, yeah." Matt seemed genuinely apologetic. The lieutenant forced a smile.

"It's fine. Don't worry," he replied, as if being kissed by an attractive radar technician in the back of a shuttle was some sort of mildly embarrassing fumble, like stepping on another person's toes. The doors to the passenger compartment slid open.

"Um. Am I interrupting?" the co-pilot said, half-eaten ration bar hanging from her hand. Both men muttered their denial and tried to shift into a less incriminating position, which the woman clearly wasn't buying. She gave Mitaka a brief and knowing smirk before continuing. "Atmo's clearing. We'll be touching down in about twenty minutes, so you're gonna need to strap in."

Matt and Dopheld returned to their seats in silence, both of them determinedly not looking at each other for the rest of the journey.

It was probably for the best.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Please note that political views expressed in this fic are not those of the author.

For someone who'd given birth yesterday, Mitaka's sister looked remarkably cheerful; she and Naidvar were still riding the waves of new-parent euphoria, both of them unable to keep themselves from cooing periodically over the baby basket in their living room. They'd named the baby Tilgivelse, which - well, Dopheld wasn't going to say what he really thought, but at least she could shorten it to Tilly or Tilgie or something when she was older. And it was a touching memorial to their mother, despite the fact that they were both too young to remember her.

As his brother-in-law settled little Tilly onto Mersey's chest, the woman smiled over at Mitaka, blanket-draped arms enfolding the infant like a snowdrift.

"I wish she was here to see this," she said.

"Yeah. Me too." Phel cleared his throat. "I think she'd be very proud."

The door chime sounded; as Naidvar got up to answer it, the lieutenant cast his eyes around Mersey's comfortable apartment, the curtain-draped transparisteel windows with the white sky beyond. Where would she be, if Mitaka hadn't joined up? Probably in that same old freezing house in the village with its run-down heating system and low, dark ceilings. Maybe one day he'd regret his choice, but not now. The First Order had been kind to them. Everyone knew the story of the Order testing their incendiary bombs on Sebris Gamma to punish an insurgent cell, but nobody seemed to realize what those insurgents had been fighting against: technology, medical care, education, industry. So what if they couldn't elect their own ruler? Their last Supreme Leaders had been poverty and cold, and nobody had voted for them either.

Naidvar hurried back into their warm living room with a somber expression on his face. Close behind, an old man, dressed in rough workman's gear and fur-lined boots, his grey-black beard ragged and sparse. He fixed Mitaka with a cold look.

"I'll come back later," he said gruffly. Dopheld stood up.

"Dad. Wait," he protested, as Mersey called out behind him. When he followed his father into the hallway, the older man spun round.

"I have nothing to say to collaborators," he spat. A deep, hollow fury clutched Mitaka's heart.

"No? What about 'sorry I drank away all our credits'? What about 'sorry I gave up on my kids because I couldn't hack it after my wife died?' Mersey and I would have _nothing_ if it wasn't for the Order."

"People are _dying_ because of the Order!" his father snapped. "They strip-mine our planet, they bomb our villages-"

"Look around you!" Mitaka flung his hand out to the side. "Our village was a shithole. The nearest doctor was thirty kilometers away. How well do you think my sister would have done with a clapped-out med droid for a midwife? All you're doing is resisting progress, and you're not even doing _that_ properly!" 

The old man scowled at him, the wrinkles pinching around his eyes. "Look at _you_. Won't even change out of the damn uniform. Does that thing ever come off? Or is it all you are, now?"

Dopheld had no answer to that. He took a long clearing breath as the doors shut behind his father, willing the tears out of his eyes so he could pretend to his sister they'd never been there.

* * *

He stayed for two more days, and neither of his hosts mentioned the argument, although Mitaka was sure they'd overheard. His father didn't return. On the morning of his departure, he sat at the breakfast table as his sister fed her baby, watching a live holofeed of the Supreme Leader's address from the new base on D'Qar. There was a transmission delay, obviously, and the signal was awful - Kylo's face was barely recognizable, his voice muddied with audio static. Mersey frowned at it.

"Has he changed his hair?"

"Hm?" Phel looked at her, and then back at the holo. "I don't know." It did, now that she mentioned it, look a little stiff, as if Hux had finally managed to pin him down and slather it in product to try and make him look halfway presentable. The mental image made him smile.

"You work with him, don't you? What's he like?" Mersey asked.

Mitaka made a noncommittal sound as his smile faded again. He hadn't told her about the choking incident - hadn't told anyone, actually. It wasn't as if anything could be done. Even before his ascent to the throne, Kylo Ren had been a law unto himself. "I don't really see him that much," he said finally. Mersey seemed to accept this answer, which was a relief. He didn't want to worry her.

"So," she said, drawing out the syllable as she moved Tilly to her basket again. "Is... there some nice boy back on the Finalizer you plan to bring home next time?"

He thought of Matt, then quickly shook his head. "I'm... still focusing on my work." It was a half-truth. Mersey probably didn't need to know about his string of one-night stands, none of them willing or compelling enough to stay past the dawn. His sister gave him a kind look.

"Try to go easy on yourself, Phel. Nai and I have good jobs. You don't have to support us any more. I keep telling you there's no need to send any credits."

"It makes me happy." That, at least, was not a lie. His dad had never been a great provider. It gave Mitaka some small satisfaction to think he'd surpassed the old man.

Mersey must have sensed where his thoughts were going, perhaps sensing it in the crease of his brow. She stood up and patted him on the shoulder.

"Nobody can change the past, Dopheld. Sometimes forgiveness isn't a matter of deserving." Mersey's hand squeezed lightly. "Sometimes it's just about moving on."

* * *

Shortly after his return, the Order announced a great victory against the traitorous insurgents of Hays Minor. A rebel compound a few kilometers from Namunngarvik, with a weapon stash fit for a small land army; not enough to overthrow the administration, but enough to cause considerable annoyance. Whether they were linked to the Resistance proper remained unclear; so, too, did the logistics of their defeat, although a message from Mersey hinted at bodies with deep, cauterized wounds, as if cut in half with a burning blade.

He passed Matt in the corridor on the way to his shift. The man blanked him entirely. Dopheld actually stopped in his tracks when he realized, and watched the technician walk off, gaze settling on the line of his shoulders under the boiler suit, the texture of his hair.

* * *

"You're his double."

He'd finally managed to catch Matt alone in a storage cupboard; Mitaka had made sure to leave his blaster in his quarters, in case the other man misinterpreted his questions. Still, Matt's expression betrayed his fear before he managed to rearrange it.

"What?" he replied, feigning ignorance.

"It was you on D'Qar. Wearing a bloody wig."

"I don't know what you're talking about," Matt murmured, turning back to his crate.

"Oh, so you _did_ kiss me in the back of that shuttle."

The technician's body froze. "...yeah."

"Bullshit." Dopheld sighed. "I'm not going to blow the operation, Matt. I just want answers."

There was a long pause. "I told you, I don't know what you're talking about. I have to get back to work."

"Fine." It was the best he was going to get. He'd done what he needed to, anyway.

* * *

Kylo Ren appeared in his doorway that evening. Mitaka had already changed into his sleep clothes, loose trousers and a regulation black tank top. He glanced along the hallway to make sure they were alone.

"You don't have to worry," he told Kylo quietly. "I'm a weapons specialist on the flagship of the feet. If I was in the habit of leaking intelligence, I'd have done it by now."

Ren said nothing, only slipped past him into the room. Dopheld shut the doors and moved to sit down.

"And by the way, you should get Matt a better wig."

Finally, the Supreme Leader spoke.

"I'm sorry."

Mitaka crossed his arms. "Sorry for what? For choking me? Or for kissing me? Or both?" It was hard to be afraid of someone when you'd been groping their arse in the cramped back of a shuttle not one week prior.

Kylo took a step toward him; the uncertainty of the gesture was strangely endearing. "For choking you. Leader Snoke... encouraged certain things in me that I now realize were..." His gaze shifted to the side, searching for words.

"Obnoxious?" Dopheld suggested. "Sociopathic? Childish and shitty?"

"I get it, lieutenant. If I'm not wanted here-"

"Your tongue has been down my throat. I think you can get away with calling me Dopheld. So you're not sorry for kissing me, then?"

Those intense brown eyes searched his own. There was a kind of humility in them. "Do you want me to be?"

"No." Mitaka stood up again. "You don't deserve my forgiveness, Supreme Leader. But you have it nonetheless. Anyway, _Matt_ never choked me. And I seem to remember _Matt_ was quite pleasant to talk to." He moved closer to him. "In addition to being a fairly good kisser."

Kylo stayed very still, but there was a softening in his expression; his shoulders relaxed a little. He looked almost grateful.

"Is that why you didn't want to - go further with me? Because I didn't know who you really were?" Dopheld asked him quietly.

"Yes."

"And now that I do...?" he prompted.

There was an extended silence. Finally, after long deliberation, Ren reached up to cup his cheek. His hand was warm and strong. Dopheld did not turn away. Perhaps if Kylo hadn't given his reasons for refusing, perhaps if he hadn't apologised, he might have stepped back, but he did not.

They ended up on his bed, side by side, lips crushing hungrily together as they brought each other to completion with their hands. Ren was nervous and eager, as if this was his first time with another man, and maybe it was - Mitaka didn't ask. Instead he gasped and gripped him closer, near enough stealing the breath from Kylo's mouth as those fingers which had once been wrapped around his throat now drew his climax from him in pulsing waves. They lay together for a long time after that, just talking.

Later that night, with the Supreme Leader's body a motionless shadow of sheets beside him, Dopheld's personal datapad flashed up with a message. It was from Mersey. Their father's corpse had been identified amongst the rebels at Namunngarvik.

Phel stared at it for a moment, then switched it off and rolled over, drawing closer to the other man's body in the dark, his sheltering warmth.


End file.
